We started at 1918, bringing you the bestselling books of the last one hundred years. We’re moving along now, covering each year at a time and we’re well into the 1930s now. Today we’re documenting the ten bestselling books of 1934, and what you were reading instead.

1934 was the year that brought us Flash Gordon, more from Nazi Germany, and the Gothenburg prize for both Kipling and Yeats.

So here they are, the ten top selling books of 1934 and the heady days before World War II. We’re also featuring some well known books that didn’t make the cut!

A fantasy writer has tweeted a scathing response to US talk show host Bill Maher’s condescending rant about comic book fans.

The New York Times Bestseller, Catherynne Valente, took to Twitter to tell Maher (and anyone who agrees with him) how utterly ridiculous it is to look down on people who read comic books or graphic novels.

Bill Maher had delivered a tirade on one of his shows after the death of Marvel Comics legend, Stan Lee. He claimed comic books and the like are for children, not adults, and even attempted to blame the state of American politics on the fact ‘millennials’ read literature with pictures in…

Valente took him to task on Twitter, first shaming him for his hypocrisy, and then explaining how very wrong he was to be so narrow minded and ignorant.

Aginer (noun) (US informal)

a-gina

A person who is against something; one who opposes a proposal, course of action, point of view, etc. Also more generally: a person having a habitually negative attitude; one who opposes any change as a matter of principle.

Early 20th century; earliest use found in Westminster (Philadelphia). From agin, regional and colloquial variant of again + -er.

We all love an independent bookshop and thankfully the UK is still full of these little treasures in almost every town. The British Book Awards, or Nibbies, has revealed the regional shortlists for the 2019 Independent Bookshop of the Year, an award that is sponsored by Gardners Books.

The Bookseller reports that in all, forty-eight bookshops are competing, from nine regions of the UK and are all hoping to win in their local area before going forward to compete for the overall, nationwide prize.

Here are the shortlisted books for each region. We have some of the bookshops listed in our bookshop section so the ones featured are linked:Read More

Many people just pick up a book, read it and decide from there whether they love it or not, for others the gender of the author is important. The gender gap in literature has been present for years, perpetuated through history by male nom de plumes and lack of respect generally for female literature.

Some bookshops have even gone so far as to create visual experiments to show how many of the shelves are dominated by male authors.

One Comment

I do so agree with this. Loved the first Fantastic Beasts, but this one was ‘bleh’.
Not nearly enough interesting beasts and some characters whose names I didn’t catch and didn’t know why they were there. The young Newt was just funny, especially when mimicking his older self’s mannerisms.
Really diappointed.